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Thank you for sending us “[SubmissionTitle]” for [Category]. We really enjoyed it and would like to publish it in the next open issue of [OrganizationName] online at [OrganizationWebSite] and in one issue of the monthly eBook anthology.

••• YOUR TO-DO LIST •••
You’re going to receive our writer’s agreement for you to sign and return. After reading and understanding the rights being sold or licensed, all you have to do is:
1: type your name and date at the bottom
2: with a 3rd person bio in the body of the email
3: provide us instructions on how to pay you with Paypal USD
4: Accept the Submittable ‘Agreement to Terms’
…then return the first three via email. To learn more about the definitions of the publication rights you are granting, please read writer’s advocacy resources (such as http://www.pw.org/content/copyright ).

••• WHERE CAN I FIND MY STORY? •••
Once published, your story will appear on a unique URL found on the Stories page located at http://www.bdlit.com/stories.html under the publication month to be read online or through an eReader, as part of an eBook anthology. After six months the link will be moved to the archives where it will remain permanently. Note that the URL for the story will not changed during the archive process. You will be eligible for selection for the twice-annual print Anthology issue. The next release for that is Fall, 2014.

••• WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE MAGAZINE? •••
You’ll note that you can sell your reprint rights right away, since we’re not asking for exclusivity at this stage of the development of our press. In the meantime we’re working very hard to build readership. We’re aiming to become an SFWA Affiliate Member and a Qualifying Professional Market by the end of 2015. Once we achieve that goal we will ask newly accepted stories for one year exclusivity. As for our progress on the qualification to apply for Qualifying Professional Market,
– we have about 60% the needed readership; and
– we are 40% into the regular continuous schedule needed; and
– we have budget to for for 40,000 words a year at pro rate.
Note that at this time we are choosing to provide only a semi-pro rate so that can extend our author payments to 200,000 words a year.

••• HOW CAN I HELP THE MAGAZINE? •••
– update your web presence so we can promote you – Goodreads, Author Central, etc.
– donate time (become a first reader)
– get readership (send friends)
– provide reviews of the eBook anthology in your favorite online bookstore.

Thank you for your submission. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.

Congratulations! Your work, “[Title]” has been accepted! Your work will not be published anywhere until you have signed and returned this agreement. By signing this agreement, you agree to allow us to publish your story in the online literary publication, [OrganizationName] in the manner detailed below. Briefly described, your work will be published on the website permantently; and in one issue of the eBook anthology only, as files formatted to load on any eReader device. These files are made available for direct side-load from the website, or download through all major eBook storefronts for all eReaders. We would request separately (at a later time) any rights to reprint your story in any print edition.

*********************************************
You are granting First Publication Rights.
You are granting Electronic Rights.
You will retain all other rights, including exclusivity.
*********************************************

••• FIRST PUBLICATION RIGHTS •••
You are verifying that this particular work has NOT BEFORE BEEN PUBLISHED and that you are the SOLE AUTHOR of the work. You will receive pay for your work, EITHER a minimum flat fee of USD $5.00 per story OR USD $0.01 per word–whichever is greater. Your work will appear on our website and in one eBook anthology having a unique ISBN, which can be used as a future publishing credit.

••• ELECTRONIC RIGHTS •••
We will maintain online access indefinitely to your story, at no charge to the reader (under Online ISSN #2333-9977 with a URL to be determined, unique to that story). We’ll publish an eBook anthology for each month’s online stories. One eBook issue will contain your story (under Print ISSN #2333-9969 and an ISBN to be determined, unique to that eBook). The eBook format will be EPUB, MOBI and PDF. No copy of any of the eBooks will have DRM enabled. The eBook will contain statement of rights given to publish, plus rights retained by you.

••• PRICING •••
The online reading access will remain free ALWAYS. The eBook will have availability as follows:
– eBooks are provided as a free side-load ALWAYS, direct from http://bdlit.com; and
– IF newer than 45 days, eBooks are provided in worldwide electronic bookstore venues:
— free of charge, or else at the venue’s minimum charge; and
– IF 45 days or older, eBooks are provided in worldwide electronic bookstore venues:
— sold at USD $3.49, or else at the venue’s minimum charge.
NOTE: 99% of readership leverages the above pricing model to avoid any reading expense, since we provide at least one path to a free copy at all times.

••• FIRST PUBLICATION ATTRIBUTION •••
You will ensure clear and appropriate attribution to the original publication when you reprint elsewhere.

••• HARD COPY PUBLICATION •••
Your work will not appear in any hard-copy print publication from [OrganizationName]. Instead, you will be notified separately if your work is selected for one of the twice-annual print anthologies (under Print ISSN #2333-9969 plus an ISBN to be determined, unique to that volume), and you will have the right to refuse at that time.

••• EDITING •••
You are also agreeing to allow the editors of [OrganizationName] to make minor changes to your work that do not alter the content of the work. These changes may include grammatical changes, spelling changes, and format changes.

••• TERMINATION •••
If at any time you would like to remove your work from our website, please contact us at contact@bdlit.com. We will take down your work immediately upon request. Note that if your work has appeared in either the print or eBook anthologies, we will be unable to remove it.

••• NOTES •••
Thank you again for your submission. We hope to see your work again in the future. Please sign below and send this contract to the email address above. Please keep a copy of this contract for your records. We would ask your assistance (before you sign) in highlighting any changes made to the agreement.

••• YOUR STATEMENT OF AGREEMENT •••
I, [SubmitterFirstName] [SubmitterLastName], agree to all of the above terms and give [OrganizationName] the right to publish my work on its website. I also verify that I am the sole author of the piece mentioned above, and as such have the freedom to submit it for publishing.

They do have an e-zine called “Reader’s Carnival” (requires upgraded access) , and

They have a classes web, with modestly priced Writer’s Carnival Classes.

Don’t forget the free resources!

Stats?

15 months old

just over 2,000 members

more than 56,000 comments.

But I’m not Canadian?!
That’s ok, we all have our flaws. They engage their users every day with new content and are growing. They’re constantly looking for great resources for their members. Friendly folks, for sure.

Sample?

“Alice Claire” says “So, you’ve come up with an awesome story idea, started writing it and posting it here for feedback. Now you’re wondering where your audience is, right? Well, that’s a large part of being a writer, especially if you’re going down the self-publishing road. You need to find your target audience. How will you do that?” Read more…

Writing a press release means following a very specific format. It’s not any harder than figuring out a submission format. There are a lot of examples on the web, but it’s a map, really, with five or six really specific parts. Here is a good example. It boils down to making your press release sound intelligible, but not jargony. It’s not a tweet. It’s not a status update. It’s not an email. It’s a 400-word newspaper article slash essay about what happened and why the reader should care and how to engage, if interested. Maybe no more than four to five hyperlinks, with an image is good. With a video link is better. Spell out any link URL, in case the link is disabled in some downstream venue.

Press Release Elements

And don’t try to make it “SEO” that will just get it hidden from search engines, if it looks too obvious. There are a zillion articles about the decline of SEO techniques so you can read up on that separately.

How to pick a Press Release service?
As for picking which company you want distributing the document, perhaps you can inform yourself about how press releases are found. Try to “search” for something yourself and figure out which press release leads you to what you want.

Pick your favorite publisher and try a phrase like “is proud to announce” with it. Once you begin finding actual press releases (not just bloggers or interviewers or pundits who read the release and are paraphrasing now), you can watch for patterns in the source name attribution as you search. The name below the title should be a clue — prweb, sbwire, emailwire, etc.

What’s the lesson here beyond “who does press releases about stuff I like?” It’s this: you can pay a fortune for a press release only to have it circulated through other PR services that just rebrand it. More about wholesaling in just a minute. Let’s first talk about where press releases get sent.

What is the “value add” of a press release service?
A press release at a minimum has to take your blurb and make it discoverable on the web. The “value add” for a press release service is supposed to be, “look who we send the press release service e-mail announcements to” … That is the real value. But watch out, even then:

40,000 emails equals 4,000 reads,

4,000 reads equals 40 clicks,

40 clicks equals 4 “follow through”

This engagement “rate of decay” is a real possibility. Think of your Pinterest/Instagram/Twitter email notifications? How many do you actually open? How many do you read? Do you go to the site? Repin? Repost? Retweet? Respond? To everything?

What do you expect to happen?
For you and your book – the punchline phrase above was “follow through”… But follow through to what? When someone reads your press release, what exactly do you want to happen? What is your engagement platform? A buy-click? A book home page at your publisher? How is your press release going to be any different than standing on a street corner holding out your book to maybe 50 different people saying, “$10!!” You’re just as likely to get maced, as to get a sale.

Make sure the call to action section of your press release is really specific.

What’s wholesale got to do with it?
Something else that should make you cautious: Let’s say you can order a press release service for, say, $69 … Did you you pass up a deal to get unlimited press releases for just $299/yr subscription? That is a sign that the service is used wholesale by other folks for bulk distribution. Oddly, the one company that is offering subscriptions is probably the company you want–even if you don’t take the subscription. Rather than the smaller service that will just come here anyway.

Let’s be specific: Press Release Monkey might charge you $129 once, for you to write your own single press release. Maybe they get fifty people to do that every month. Their income: $6500/month. They order re-distribution to three other wholesalers like PRBuzz.com ($300/yr), SBWire.com ($840/yr) and maybe go nuts and get Emailwire.com ($6,000/yr). All those subscriptions allow them to submit unlimited press releases. They have near the income in just one month to pay for their wholesale subscription expenses for a year. Put another way, they only need 50 or 60 customers a year to cover their bulk subscription expense, for as many press releases as they want . Yes they have other expenses and value add. But that seems lucrative…

How to follow up
To begin with, put a unique phrase in your release that doesn’t occur anywhere else, including your own work or the web or any other promotional material you manage. Let’s say, you pick the phrase “unsurpassed gusto and vigor” … Use that to search later (with the quotes, to get exact matches) to find how far the phrase (and therefore the press release) went into the searchable Internet. Maybe you have a reach of 500 sites. Not bad. Now test how far beyond your press release the news went, say into blogs, discussions, etc. So, search again, but exclude your wholesaler from the results using dashes. Like this: “unsurpassed gusto and vigor” -emailwire -sbwire -prbuzz …. You might be down to less than a dozen sites.

Are they good sites? A good reach? One can only hope.

Could you have just contacted them yourself? Ha-ha. There is no substitute for direct marketing~!

TL;DR
The five tips are:

It’s ok to let someone else write it, but you can learn to do it

SEO makes no difference

Get to know a few press releases first and how they are discovered

Choose the company carefully

Understand the company’s value add

Be clear on what you want to happen

Design the text so you can follow up

I say five tips because I can tell already you don’t like two of them. So pick your best five, get out there and go nuts.

So then, print and ebook publishers are doomed to become a niche solution? The most gripping analogy for me was something that I personally experienced: The desolation of books about software languages. They are all but gone, replaced not by eBooks, but by community-produced web apps, databases, wikis, etc. This is good. Personally, my (software book) needs were met more readily than by a print book (or any equally useless eBook transcription).

I am thinking about how this applies to publishers like us. In general I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how, “gee, i wish we made money like the big publishers” or “gee, we NEED eBook versions of our magazine”… At the same time, all the reading we have been doing has led us to believe that there is little difference in the elements of supply chain production between a big 6 publisher and an independent publisher. Similarly, there are parallel paths available for distribution. The real rude awakening for any published writer is the requirement that they have to largely drive their own marketing–even big 6. But I digress.

Let’s stick to presses, specifically independent publishing. When you’re a journal first, Like Black Denim Lit, then a press, like Black Denim Press, I have to look twice to see how the presenter’s discussion of environmental pressures might manifest for a venue such as ours. Here’s my argument for how this might play out:

Universe Annex’s Latest

Take the example of a venue in similar scope and reach (and even readership) such as “Universe Annex” (UA). This is a re-incarnation of Baen Publishing’s artsy, sci-fi journal Jim Baen’s Universe–filled with up-and-coming award-worthy (if not award winning) writers.

Take a look at UA today, and if you read through their submissions guidelines, you’ll recognize quickly that the magazine is fed completely on submissions that are cultivated by a writer’s forum that lives here Baen’s Bar.

Duotrope reports that the acceptance rate is about 1 in 15. All UA’s submissions are hosted in a public, free forum, for which anyone can have a reading password. Submissions are in one forum topic and work-shopped in another forum topic by writers and readers alike. Once the story is “good enough” (measured by community consensus) then the story is promoted to the formal electronic publication that is released six times a year (and the writer is paid a professional rate).

All by itself this work-shopping is not a unique idea. What is impressive is that this journal’s practices comes as an extension of a highly-regarded “writer’s publisher” such as Baen. Baen has always been a little different. And always good at marketing. And clearly outstanding at meeting the needs of its readers. And paying its writers.

***

All of this falls in the food-for-thought category–when considering any change in direction that our editorial practices or tools we might offer. I think the accomplishments of the UA submission process are unique and radically different than ours. Would it be the way for us to go over the next year? Maybe. Would it be the way to go over the next five years? Probably.

Similarly, how does the speaker’s predicted trend affect our print and eBook initiative? Is that trend more damaging than the marketing challenges faced, or is it a different take on the same symptom? In other words, is the way to increase print / eBook revenue to take a look at the reader’s interest in the format versus the reader’s interest in the content?

It could be argued that the entire presentation could be largely ignored with regard to Black Denim Lit, but it is distinctly more relevant when looking for success with our print / eBooks.

May Stories Released~!

Susan E. Sage
We have a room devoted to the avatars in the monastery. People venture here from all over to see the sacred objects — the dolls — that once carried spirits from one body to another. I suppose my avatar is among them, but since they all look pretty much the same, I’ve never tried to figure out the exact vessel. Read More…

Boomtown Guide For The PerplexedMichael Reilly
As he and Rose left for Morton’s, he pressed his unruly hair into place with his fingers. The elevator opened, they got on, and they did not talk as they descended. In the dark basement they groped without confidence toward the freight elevator. Charley heard a loud crash and felt Rose’s fingers grab his arm for a second, then she apparently fell. “Oh no!” By her voice, she had started crying. Read More…

BingoLela Marie De La Garza
Earth had introduced bingo to Orulian, and now the craze was planet wide. Huge bingo complexes were everywhere. Orulian was a large, rich planet, and the prizes were treasures beyond dreams. But there were rules. And getting into a game in the first place was costly. Read More…

Alan Bray
The clocks held weights in the shape of pine cones and eggs hung from chains. A feeling of expectation came from behind the little shuttered doors, as if … But the clocks had all been stopped, all at different times. “Do you restore these?” Sam asked, wondering if clocks that beat and twitched filled another room. The silence was uncomfortable. Read More…

Konstantine Paradias
We flew across the English Channel in fifteen seconds flat, breaking the sound barrier twice over. I could see the air molecules heating up as they ground against my skin. Behind me, I could imagine teeth gritting together. Thirty seconds more, we were crossing over Rouen, the TGV a trail of mercury on the countryside. Read More…

Dave Morehouse
A couple years ago Edna showed me how she could read lips. I promised I wouldn’t tell. “They’ll say more if they don’t know,” she had whispered. “It’s how I hear the voices.” She told me their secrets. They will keep us here forever. Poor Edna … nowadays she doesn’t hear anything. Read More…

Ken Poyner
I need to get to wherever this place is. I am the new novelty, straight from the complicated cities and now out in the hinterlands. Even people who come in from thirty miles out are seeing progress these days. No matter how badly they want to do it, yokels cannot stay yokels. If they try, their own children abandon them. Read More…

Since we are so small, we’re not part of the VIDA count, but we intend to pay attention to this important metric. If you are a woman in the literary arts, please know that we are listening. Here is where we are at as of the “acceptances sent” from 2/21/14 through 5/5/14: